“I’ve always thought of Phoenix as our quarterback,” El Caballero tells me sadly over the phone. “But I feel betrayed by his actions, and certain trusts have been broken.”
El Caballero, a member of the controversial Rain City Superhero Movement, is announcing his resignation today from the crime-fighting squad after ringleader Phoenix Jones allegedly stole his helmet.
“I had a class 3 military helmet… it was one of those late nights out breaking up bar fights and chasing crack dealers and I left my helmet in Phoenix’s car on the way home,” El Caballero says.
“It’s been three months, and I haven’t heard back from him. I reached out to him as a brother. I told him, ‘Hey look dude, it’s just a helmet! Why don’t you just come over to my house and bring it to me or say ‘sorry dude I lost it… or pawned it’ or whatever the hell he did with it! I’m supposed to have somebody’s back on the street who can’t even have the back of somebody he calls a homie?”
Above: The missing helmet.
After posting about the incident on the private Rain City Superhero Facebook Group page “to light a fire under his ass to get it to me,” El Caballero heard from four other undisclosed members of the squad who also had beef with Phoenix.
“We like all our guys bulletproof,” El Caballero says, “Over four people have told me now they’ve given him money for an armor order and haven’t received their armor or a refund. We apparently had an armor sponsorship at one point… but I don’t even know if that’s around anymore. We’ve had too much smoke blown up my keester and everyone else’s… it’s incredibly frustrating.”
El Caballero joined the group two years ago, hoping to reinvigorate a lost sense of “chivalry” in society by fighting crime and helping the homeless with his alter-ego “El Caballero,” Spanish for “The Knight.” He claims that he will continue on solo after his departure from the Rain City Superheroes, and is looking to recruit his own volunteers to help out. El Caballero was on the scene in the controversial Mayday protests last year, which found the superhero patrol squad pepper-spraying agitators and as a result, getting silly stringed in rebuke.
